Conor Friedersdorf picks a fight for me, and (being stupid) I engage. It's impossible for this not to sound like bullshit, and maybe a little of it is, but I genuinely admire Wilkinson in some ways. He is every bit as smart as everybody says he is. If I'm being honest, that's part of the reason I am so intent on needling him. He knows approximately a million times as much as I do about economics, among other things, and I have to admit, unlike many libertarians who claim the same, he really does care about people. But I have a deep aversion to those who believe in one truth or one mechanism to advance human kind, and it seems as if Wilkinson believes economic growth is just that truth or that mechanism. Anyway, Conor is right, and I shouldn't tug the tail of the tiger. But I do disagree with him, and I do think that libertarianism writ large has done a shockingly bad job of evolving in the face of events.
I'll be hiding in the bushes.
5 comments:
If you take econ 101 and get it, you're left thinking that markets are pure magic, and that anything that interferes with them are somehow diabolical or ignorant and misguided. If you keep taking econ, pretty much every class after that is about how markets don't work they way they "should," and how economists deal with that.
So never assume libertarians know anything about economics. I doubt many got past econ 101. I did, and let me tell you, by the time you get into third and fourth year classes, it's nearly impossible to stay a libertarian. What's especially galling is when libertarians (McArdle, mainly) try to baffle their readers with a cloud of economic jargon they don't understand themselves.
(Wilkinson is the best of a bad lot though.)
I think a lot of libertarians come to it by a kind of minimalist aesthetic approach to economics. You know, like writing a novel without using the letter "e". Maybe we can have a decent society with a federal government that spends 10% of GDP instead of 20%, but I don't see any reason why we should test that hypothesis.
If you take econ 101 and get it, you're left thinking that markets are pure magic, and that anything that interferes with them are somehow diabolical or ignorant and misguided. If you keep taking econ, pretty much every class after that is about how markets don't work they way they "should," and how economists deal with that.
And if you take a class in public choice, you realize that although markets often do fail, there is a rather pervasive phenomenon called government failure too. But presumably you know all about this...
Bring teh sass, Freddie.
You never disappoint.
;)
"But I have a deep aversion to those who believe in one truth or one mechanism to advance human kind"
Very well said, Freddie. Less government is not a bad thing, but when the notion of free markets approaches dogmatism, as it so often does, its proponents become blind to many fairly obvious realities.
For instance, monopolies, and the fact that capitalism, unfettered, can become non-competitive. Fortunately, unlike Marxism, capitalism is still a very valuable and practical economic system, and does fine with smart governance at its side...
Don't concern yourself with Will's 'economic' genius. He is a typical libertarian that can only see Hayek or Marx as the only two options. In this particular case he has misunderstood the paper he is reading and wants to claim Romer for his side.
Jeff P.
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